Symphony Review: Mahler's Fifth closes out season

May 13, 2013

Joyce Yang played with the Des Moines Symphony Saturday. / Special to the Register

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The two composers whose work started and finished the Des Moines Symphony’s season finale met in 1907 in Helsinki. And when they did, the Austrian, Gustav Mahler, told the Finn, Jean Sibelius, that a symphony “must be like the world. It must embrace everything.”

Mahler’s gigantic Fifth Symphony comes pretty close. Maestro Joseph Giunta and the orchestra gave it its due in a fiercely energized performance Saturday at the Des Moines Civic Center. It was the musical equivalent to a Russian novel — sprawling, grandiose, sometimes hard to follow, but ultimately rewarding for those who stuck with it. (Not everyone did. A few near me nodded off; a few others left early.)

The 70-minute piece starts with a single trumpet and ends with huge orchestral forces, with plenty of good moments in between, including heroic solos from the principal horn, Bret Seebeck, melting warmth from the cellos, and a well-paced bit of peace during the adagietto written for harp and strings. But most of the piece is big and loud, and Giunta saved just enough firepower for the end.

It was a jumbo night all around, actually. Leaders from the orchestra’s 75th anniversary fundraising campaign announced — after a brass fanfare — that they had raised $9.1 million, exceeding their goal of $7.5 million. The money will beef up the endowment, pay for improvements at the Symphony Academy in the Temple for Performing Arts and buy a new acoustical shell for the Civic Center stage.

Such a shell would have helped Saturday’s guest pianist sound even better than she did. The Korean-born Van Cliburn silver medalist Joyce Yang completely owned Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor with a physical performance that highlighted its extremes, from cascading chords to quiet ripples on the surface of a pond. The orchestra leaned into the melody when it was theirs, adding lyrical oomph but occasionally overpowering the soloist’s runs.

Yang had the spotlight to herself in her encore, an elegant, silvery transcription of “The Man I Love” by George Gershwin. It sounded surprisingly like the Grieg she had just polished off.

The program opened with a rendering of Sibelius’ “Finlandia,” which, in its original orchestral form, was darker and more dramatic than the version that has ended up in many church hymnals. The brass section splattered a few entrances early on, but they re­deemed themselves when they took over the expansive theme.

And that theme, by the way, first came from the woodwinds, led by principal flutist, Eva Ryan, who joined the orchestra this season and will spend the summer with a prestigious orchestra in Finland. Her good news came during Giunta’s traditional end-of-the-season salute to orchestra members who have been with the group for various lengths of time. The biggest applause went to two men who are retiring after a combined total of almost 100 years: bass trombone player Dennis Wilson, after 46, and bassist Richard McCoy, after 52.